because you can't have too much entertainment... December 2000

The Great Repression
Quills Dir: Phillip Kauffman Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Joaquin Phoenix & Kate Winslet
Chocolat Dir: Lasse Hallström Starring: Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp & Judi Dench

(Oscar Lust Pt 1) It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Which is why the movies are beginning to look a lot like bottom-feeding, desperate pleas for the Oscar. Which means big juicy themes (in this case REPRESSION) and earnest, showy takes on them. If you are the type that jumps through web pages without finishing what you started reading, I'll sum it up right now: Quills is good. Chocolat is monumentally bad. Please, if you love the cinema, avoid it! So strong are my anti -Chocolat feelings that I thought I'd just get that out of the way first. (Oscar Lust Pt 2 here)

OK. If you're still with us let's begin. Repression is an eternally favorite theme of artists because their very art relies on letting go and giving themselves over to the abstraction of creative impulse. The theme is thus natural catnip to 'theater people.' Lasse Halström, the famous Swedish director, is taking a shot at the topic in theaters soon when Chocolat opens and Phillip Kauffman is already doing a lively riff on it in theaters now with Quills. Nearly every year repression plays a role in at least one major Oscar piece. The bizarre and noteworthy thing about this in the cinema...or at least in the cinema that springs from Hollywood, is that the movies could hardly be any more conservative. The industry repeatedly churns out safe, predictable "everything's all right" films and then rewards itself come Oscar time for its innovations and daring. You want case examples in recent films? Take Saving Private Ryan and American Beauty. Both films were rewarded for being daring, difficult, and progressive when in actuality they were very soothing to the country's mindset and, whatever their entertainment values, not at all complex in their world view. If you doubt this double standard just consider that the daring progressive films this year, like Dancer in the Dark and Requiem for a Dream are not considered front runners for any of the prizes.

Phillip Kauffman has always been something of an outsider in terms of artistic sensibility. His interest in outsider sexuality and the emotionally complex terrain of lust and love (brilliantly displayed in his Henry and June) is a perfect match for this material: A meditation on the Marquis de Sade's last years in a progressive asylum. Truth be told, the danger of "REPRESSION" is only one of the themes at work here, but it all strangely zips by you. The plot is set in motion thanks to the chaos caused by Sade's "impure tales' which he gets to the printer thanks to the adventurous and sexually curious laundress, Madeleine. The government's attempts to quiet his unruly voice create havoc in the progressive asylum where the Marquis resides. That's the plot, but it's all about the ideas being thrown around and coming at you from surprising angles and compromising positions. There are themes involving political power struggles, the uneasy and ugly relationship between commerce and art, and the complex relationship between art and its audience (which deserves a movie all to itself). If that wasn't enough there's all sorts of brief asides on sadism, necrophilia, psycotherapy, mental disorder, violence, misogyny, economic opression, and the values and dangers of escapism. If, in the end, the film is not as complex as the abundant ideas bandied about, it's still a fine entertainment. This comes mostly from the bawdy fun of the material and from the showy (but not distractingly so) turns from nearly all involved.

Kate Winslet (last year's FiLM BiTCH best actress winner for Holy Smoke!) is an electric actress and, even if Madeleine is not her best creation, she is still grandly emotional. Winslet may indeed have the perfect movie face. It registers almost primordially pure emotion and has from her very first film Heavenly Creatures. (If you haven't seen it, turn off your computer immediately and run to the video store!) Geoffrey Rush's acting is typically a lot fussier than Kate's but that works for him here playing an obsessive compulsive writer. In many ways, this performance is his best--far superior at least to his previous Oscar win or attempts at the same. Joaquin Phoenix's work is more troubling. Like Winslet he has a face perfectly suited to the screen but his acting is far closer in spirit to Keanu Reeves than it ever was to his talented, late brother River. Joaquin was horridly over the top in Gladiator (for which he'll oddly enough be nominated, just watch!) but his forced and stylized work goes over much better here. At the very least it's great fun to watch him EMOTE. Joaquin's stiff persona is actually terrifically suited to his character, the kindhearted Abbé who is in way over his head with the various loonies and passionate woman (Kate) that he works with. Of the principals, only Michael Caine, in the stuffiest role, doesn't seem to be enjoying himself.

The story chugs along fairly swiftly and has terrific sequences, but in the end it doesn't cohere in a way that would really drive its message home or have it stick in the memory the way some of Kauffman's other work has. (Ten years on and I can still see several passages in Henry & June vividly.) And, most frustratingly of all, you get the feeling that the actual Marquis de Sade deserved a far grittier and less sympathetic biopic. But ah...that's another film. It's obviously not the film that Kauffman intended to make and another brave director will attempt it some day.

If you're at all disappointed with how tame Quills is, "you ain't seen nothing yet." Chocolat is almost the perfect embodiment of what is wrong with Hollywood...or to be more specific, what is wrong with MIRAMAX. That studio used to churn out hard hitting and "edgy" work before "edgy" became a style more than a reality. Now it seems Miramax has a two fold purpose. One: to finance foreign films that wish they were made in Hollywood and/or Hollywood films that wish they had foreign cachet. Two: to make those films as cute as a button and win them truckloads of dubious Oscar nominations.

The winning couple in the otherwise wretched Chocolat.

Lasse Halström is the ideal vessel for all of Miramax's questionable artistic impulses. He's foreign and thus invested with respect even though he's a hack. He wouldn't know "challenging' if it hit him over the head. And, last but certainly not least, he's about as subtle as Oliver Stone at his most pedantic. Indeed, all of the collective foibles of Miramax and Halstöm are on evident display in this film about a single mother who opens a chocolaterie that has a transformative effect in a conservative village in France (The Hollywood version of France that is; a bunch of international actors all unwisely attempting French accents in scenes with the real thing -courtesy of Gallic goddess Binoche. )

This fable (a complete ripoff, by the way, of Like Water for Chocolate) teaches us about the evils of religious oppression and patriarchy through a simple tale of a town's revolt against outsiders. Everything about this preachy story is telegraphed to you right from the start in annoyingly condescending voiceover. At one point the narrator actually proclaims "Time Passed" while you are watching ice melt and winter turning to spring. Lasse Halström thinks you're that stupid, folks! If you're four you might enjoy being talked to in this way, but I certainly didn't. In case you're deaf and can't hear the voice explaining the film to you there are enough visual clues (the one area where it's not a complete disaster...it's pretty to look at) to keep you informed as well an uneasy mix of pretension and slapstick humor. To top it all off there's a crazy-ass quilt of acting styles. It's like everyone is in a different film. Depp emerges victorious, but he only has to survive the stupefying movie for a lengthy cameo. Binoche and Dench emerge relatively unscathed, but are hardly working at their peak. Lena Olin, who is usually good, and Alfred Molina fare much worse. They both give laughably obvious performances that will either net them nominations or destroy their careers. I'm afraid that's how bad the film is and how ridiculous the Oscars can be. Avoid this movie like the plague! It is a seemingly innocuous trifle but it's filled with poison. Every box office dollar and Oscar nomination this rotten dessert earns is a blow to the integrity of the art form. Miramax is a ship that needs to be sunk and above all else, Lasse Halström, your cruise director, must go down with it.

-Nathaniel

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